Chaos and comedy. Death and rebirth. Luck and, uh, running out of luck. A good roguelike doesn't treat the player like other games do. Roguelikes won't guide you helpfully along a path, or let you cinematically snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. They're more likely to dangle you deep between the jaws of defeat and fumble the rope until you go sliding down defeat's hungry gullet. This is their beauty, and it's a part of why we keep coming back for another go. Next time everything will go right. Next time you'll find the right pair of poison-proof loafers, the perfect co-pilot for your spaceship, a stash of stronger, better ropes. Next time.
Here's our list of the 19 best roguelikes on PC you can play in 2024.
]]>12 years later, The Binding of Isaac remains my go-to roguelite. There have been some incredible Rogue-inspired games since, but nothing has quite stuck its disgusting, fly and poop-covered hooks in me like Edmund McMillen’s tale of a crying child fighting his murderous mother using the power of his tears. Yes, I’m in therapy, why do you ask?
]]>With The Binding Of Isaac: Rebirth's final, final, for real this time final expansion launching next week, lead Isaac man Edmund McMillen has spoken about his plans for what follows. One answer I'm actually surprised to hear is Isaac 2, a full-on sequel to the roguelikelike dungeon-crawler which has already had a remake and numerous expansions. That won't be for many years, mind. Once Isaac's Repentance expansion is done, one of his main plans is to finish Mewgenics, a weird cat-breeding game first announced way back in 2012.
]]>The Binding Of Isaac: Rebirth is almost finished. No, actually, for real this time. Two years after it's announcement, five years after Afterbirth+ and almost a decade after the game's flash debut, Edmund McMillen reckons The Binding Of Isaac: Repentance is just shy of finished - closing out the roguelike with one final DLC that promises a sequel-scale faecal basement adventure.
]]>By my estimates, roughly seven trillion so-called roguelikes have come out since Edmund McMillan first offered up The Binding Of Isaac back in (oh no) 2011. But you can't keep McMillan and his naked infant children out of the basement for long. The Legend Of Bum-bo, a strange deckbuilding/match-four mashup painted in cardboard, embarks on its gross-out adventure today.
]]>As an avid The Binding Of Isaac player and a fan of absurd disparity in fighting game crossovers, I'm delighted to hear that Isaac has joined the cast of Blade Strangers. Isaac, a murdered child who in his native roguelikelike top-down shooter fights sentient poos by crying on them, will face a roster of heavily-armed crossover characters including Quote, the warbot hero of Cave Story. A bit like watching Butt-Head fight Godzilla on Salty Bet. That said, seeing Isaac in action in the new trailer below, I am surprised by how much of a scrapper the wee guy is. Even if he does cheat by getting his mum to fight for him.
]]>This is Brendan, broadcasting live from rumour world, where everything is made of a nebulous candy floss-like substance. The locals call it “hope.” Amid this sticky cloud, a figure has formed. It’s Geralt of Rivia, hero of popular Gwent spin-off, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The monster-hunting swordsman will “make an appearance” in another game later this year, according to CD Projekt Red community lead Marcin Momot. Some have asserted that he'll be a guest character in upcoming fighting game Soul Calibur VI. Which makes sense given the close business ties between the Polish studio and Japanese publisher Namco Bandai.
It isn't confirmed. But it does raise the question: who else deserves a place on the stage of history? I asked the RPS treehouse who they’d like to see. Here’s the list we all settled on.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
'Played' in the title suggests something concluded, but clearly if you did ever play The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (plus its various expansions), you're almost certainly still playing it. Forever and ever.
]]>The Binding Of Isaac: Rebirth (plus Afterbirth add-ons) is very much my jam right now. It's been in my life for a while, but December (and now January) was when I fully committed to it. By which I mean 'it took over almost my entire life.' I've seen so much, I've killed so much, and I've been killed by so much. I have a degree of skill at the game I never believed possible (and which, clearly, pales into insignificance against that of longer-term players), but even so, there are certain enemies that always, always give me grief, even as I am able to face down far great horrors.
I say enemies. I mean dicks. Absolute, total dicks who have humiliatingly cost me victory on more occasions than I could ever admit to. These are those dicks.
]]>The new expansion for the marvelous The Binding of Isaac is a mixed bag. Stick your hand in and, fittingly, given the grotesque nature of the game, you might find a pleasant treat, a razor blade or a little cluster of dingleberries. Toxic dingleberries. For the first time since its release, Isaac really is creaking under its own weight and Afterbirth † feels as overstuffed as a trio of turduckens. It's not a pretty sight, but there is plenty of meat wrapped around all those little choking bones.
]]>We’ve all been there. When a puzzle is so obtuse you can’t even begin to work out how to solve it. When you’ve been searching for the next bonfire in a Dark Souls game for hours on end. When you've committed to finding a game’s scattered collectibles and one proves a bit too well hidden. Wikis and guides can replace hours of frustration with a few seconds of Googling, making up for an oversight on the part of a game dev or the occasional brain fart on the part of the player.
They can also leach the fun out of games. Looking up solutions can quickly devolve into a paint-by-numbers experience, with almost as much time spent alt-tabbed as playing a game. The moment that door is opened, there’s a danger that any sense of challenge or discovery will be lost. So, how do you decide when turning to external sources such as guides, FAQs, Wikis and search engines is worth the risk?
]]>In the week or so after the release of The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth [official site], many members of the Isaac community were up in arms. Datamining - digging through the code for behind the scenes information - had revealed less new content than the pre-release build-up and Steam store page seemed to promise. There was talk of gated content that would only release when updates arrived, there were accusations of lying and betrayal; the Isaac subreddit was saltier than the Dead Sea. And then, over the weekend, the game crept out into the real world and everything got a little weird...
]]>Four years after its original release, The Binding of Isaac [official site] is still one of the games I'm most likely to turn to given a spare fifteen minutes (or couple of hours). The recent release of Afterbirth, a DLC/expansion/semi-sequel has rekindled my love, and I've spent most evenings since locked in a basement of shit, blood and tears. Whether you want to classify it as an expansion or an entirely new game, it's one of my favourite things released this year.
]]>Books! They're like films without pictures, or games that are all cutscene. Old people and hipsters really like them, teenagers think they're like totally lame, and quite frankly we should all read more of them. There are countless games inspired by books - most especially Tolkien, Lovecraft and early Dungeons & Dragon fiction - but surprisingly few games based directly on books. Even fewer good ones.
]]>You probably want over a thousand new rooms, 120 new items, 8 new bosses, 25 new enemies, 4 alternate chapters, 10 new challenges, a new game mode and daily runs for twitchy Catholic horror roguelike/twin-stick shooter The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. You probably want to know when you can have those things, too.
I will tell you: October 30th. That is one day before there are lots of student house parties attended by sexy zombies and people who think dressing as one of the Avengers counts as a Halloween costume. And one day before every single videogame in existence adds a one-day-only spooky mode. So at least the Afterbirth expansion - that name being the first time I've felt just a little bit repulsed by The Binding of Isaac's body horror grotesquery - is getting in there first.
Full details on the add-on plus a CGI-y trailer below.
]]>Who knew crying babies could generate so much news? Anyone who knows new parents, I suppose. Jokes. But here I mean The Binding of Isaac [official site], which has exciting new things going on with both its original Flash version and the fancy remake Rebirth.
BoI's ultra-difficult 'Eternal' update is now out, introducing a new difficulty mode full of ridiculous bullet-spewing variants of enemies. It's somewhere between challenging and trolling. We also have more word on the 'Afterbirth' expansion for Rebirth, with a glimpse of new alternative levels and talk of making secret character The Lost maybe actually fun.
]]>Though The Binding of Isaac's remake-o-expansion Rebirth has been out for a few months, and even has an expansion in the works already, dear old original Isaac hasn't gone forgotten. Co-creator and programmer Florian Himsl has announced he's working on new DLC for The Binding of Isaac: Wrath of the Lamb by himself. It'll bring a new Hard mode to the roguelikelike weep 'em up with "elite" versions of monsters, a bit like Rebirth has, along with bug fixes.
]]>2011's The Binding Of Isaac was the evil, twisted twin to Spelunky - both perma-death, procedurally-generated games with superficial accessibility masking extreme precision of design and a long path to mastery. Isaac, though, went for an over-caffeinated shmup angle rather than measured puzzle-platforming. A tale of a young boy descending into a hellish world of blood, faeces and religious perversion in search of some kind of redemption, what it's really about is surviving a horde of monsters with the help of gruesome upgrades. The Binding Of Isaac: Rebirth is a new version in a new engine, with new items, art and music. It remains, uh, unsympathetic to Bible fans.
You probably already know if you're buying it or not.
]]>It's healthy to cry, They say. Better out than in, They tell me. I firmly believe that no one should cry any more than four times per year, and should carefully ration their tears lest they find themselves amidst tragedy but over quota, forced to grind their teeth and dig their nails into their palms to keep the blubbing in. This is perhaps not wholly healthy. The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth has so very many tears but I can't rightly grumble about that - because they're weaponised. Isaac is once again weeping furiously at manifestations of whatever's going on inside his head after his mother tried to sacrifice him, as the roguelikelike shmup's remake-o-sequel is now out.
]]>Runers is a top-down, roguelikelikelikelike/shmup hybrid which plays a little like The Binding Of Isaac, but without the nightmare foetuses and with DIY spells instead. It's out now, and I've spent a little time fiddling with its fireballs. Here's what I made of it.
]]>Roguelike-like weep 'em up The Binding of Isaac Rebirth has a new trailer, which means several things. Firstly, you can watch people nude but for the sacks over their heads stumble around accompanied musically by a warbling hymn. Secondly, the expanded remake now has a confirmed release date: November 4th. And a release date naturally means pre-orders are open too, on Steam. The discount promised to folks who already own the original game will only be available before launch, we now know, but it's a respectable 33%. Come see the sackfolk dance their merry jig.
]]>Alice already delivered information about how co-op will work in Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, but if you weren't paying attention at the back of the class, perhaps you'd like to see the mode in action. Designer Edmund McMillen has played the game for seconds shy of eight minutes, showing off some of the new co-op challenges, items and abilities that extend the Nicalis'-developed game beyond "remake" territory into the well-established "remake-sorta-sequel-sorta-standalone-expansion-sorta" territory.
Anyway. Watch the video below. It's got about a million tears in it.
]]>The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is called a "remake" but it also bungs in an expansion's worth of new stuff for the roguelike-like shooty dungeon crawler. Developers Nicalis are working with creator Edmund Mcmillen to add loads of new items, characters, rooms, enemies, and bosses, an extra chapter, local co-op, and other odds and ends. McMillen gabs about changes and additions on his devblog, but looks at it in motion were limited to the occasional animated gif. Now the game's finally in good enough shape that he's shared a "first look" at a beta build.
]]>Local co-op coming in The Binding of Isaac's remake may sound jolly exciting but are you concerned that having help might turn the roguelike-like into a game for, not just about, babies? Relax! Take a chill pill, pal. Designer Edmund McMillen has explained how it'll all work and, from the sound of things, Rebirth's co-op will bring the joys of friendship without necessarily losing the thrills of trying not to die. See, calling in a baby friend (no, co-op players actually are babies) will cost a slice of your life, and they may come with a terrible curse.
]]>Quick, the RPS hivemind has retired to a snoozing chamber in London to absorb more knowledge into the glorious whole, so let's have a party. It'll be full of blood and guts and dead animals and religious subtexts! Not your sort of party? You probably haven't played enough Binding of Isaac, the gory 2D roguelike from way back in the mists of time, 2011. It was one of the first in the long line of every-run-is-different action games from the past few years and (particularly with the DLC) is fucking brilliant. Since we last heard from dev Mr. Edmund McMillen, he's been hard at work on a remake/expansion and putting updates on the game's blog. The main purpose is to get away from its Flash trappings so it will run acceptably on a larger number of machines, plus allow some console ports. However, there's also been music, item and enemy reveals, the best of which I've hunted down, cried at until they died and hung the corpses of on the wall below.
]]>While the main Humble Bundle is diverting itself from gaming with a really quite splendid collection of audiobooks, it seems to have snuck out one of the best collections of games so far in its Weekly Bundle. Rather than showcasing games from one studio, this week it's a collection of Roguelikes. (Everyone who wants to have a fight about the terminology, please do so here.) That's Paranautical Activity, Dungeons Of Dredmor Complete, Hack Slash Loot, The Binding Of Isaac + DLC, Teleglitch Die More Edition, and Sword Of The Stars: The Pit Gold. Cor.
]]>What happens when one half of a development team goes on holiday and leaves the other, slightly agoraphobic half at home? In a roundabout way, it ends up in The Binding Of Isaac. That's the origin of the game, the very moment that sent Edmund McMillen down into the basement to confront elements of his religious upbringing in a Flash game. Isaac's odd story is told in this interview from the makers of Indie Game: The Movie. Want to hear about how Ed's Team Meat partner Tommy Refenes' holiday turned into a game of contradictions? It's posted below, and it's absolutely fascinating. EDIT: The video was live when I wrote the story, and now it's private. WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
]]>After Ed McMillen quietly announced The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth last year, the snazzy, SNES-style remake of the disturbing rogue-like has been fairly quiet. Almost as if it were locked in a basement, hidden from the judgmental gaze of society who wouldn't be able to just stare at the awful, lumpen horrors it possesses. But it turns out I'm applying the game's fiction to the development process, which is a huge error. I've still to see the game in action, but the atmosphere of the live-action trailer they've just released is pitch-perfect. Low-fi and utterly horrible. Please watch it with the lights on.
]]>Vlambeer is making yet another videogame like it's their job or something. They have probably lost their minds, but we may as well reap the rewards. Originally a quick and dirty Mojam prototype dystopia-'em-up, Wasteland Kings is now evolving into a full-on action-roguelike (or "roguelike-like," as designer JW Nijman describes it) with heaps of characters, procedurally generated locations, and of course, guns. In practice, that means you run from area to area, dodging and blasting circles around enemies in a desperate bid for survival. All the while, you mutate new, largely randomized powers and pick up better, stranger weapons. Sounds a bit like fellow action-roguelike The Binding of Isaac, doesn't it? And while the inspiration is certainly there, Nijman insists that Wasteland Kings is millions of cracking, sun-parched miles away from a carbon copy.
]]>The holidays are a time of indecision. Who should you visit? What ugly, uncomfortable seasonal sweater should you wear? Which deity(s) should you dedicate your hedonistic blood celebrations to (aside from Horace, of courace)? And, most importantly, what will you buy before/after your relatives shower you with socks or rocks or whatever it is that passes for a universal gift these days? But it doesn't end there. Oh no. There are, after all, 927.45 trillion videogames to choose between, so you may as well just start sobbing and curl up in a fetal futility ball right now. Unless... no, no. That's crazy. But maybe... no. It'll never work. Ah, what the hell: bundles! Both Indie Royale and Humble Bundle have new offerings up, and they're quite tempting, if I do say so myself.
]]>Miaow miaow miaow Team Meat miaow Super Meat Boy miaow The Binding of Isaac? Miaow miaow miaow Mew-Genics, miaow miaw miaow. Miaow miaow don't know miaow, miaow miaow miaow miaow 12,207,031,250,000,000,000,000 cats miaow miaow. Miaow!
]]>I suppose it's only fitting that, just as one of the holliest, jolliest, holiest of holidays begins to descend upon us, we've suddenly struck a blood-and-pus-spewing vein of Binding of Isaac news. First there was a completely mad (in a good way) looking Team Fortress 2 mod, and now Edmund McMillen himself has reclaimed the stage to present a hellish heap of details about the upcoming Binding of Isaac remake. In short, Nicalis - they of the recent Cave Story console remakes and NightSky - are handling the heavy lifting while McMillen cracks the whip from the lead designer nightmare throne. Non-Flash graphics, local co-op, and a Wrath-of-the-Lamb-sized expansion are the standout features, but it wouldn't be Binding of Isaac without a million-billion other gleefully gruesome things. And on that front, McMillen and Nicalis intend to deliver.
]]>Sometimes, modding is a delicate, subtle art - its inspirations many and nuanced, and its results unexpectedly evocative. It's akin to the flap of a butterfly's wings - barely even a whisper on the wind, yet capable of breathing pollen-dappled life into countless fields and genres. Other times, modding's about taking one crazy and thing and cramming it into another crazy thing to make a third, orders of magnitude crazier thing. Which brings us to a completely insane Binding of Isaac mod for Team Fortress 2. The objective, so far as I can tell, is to do normal TF2 stuff (teamwork, friendship, murder) while also dealing with an onslaught of decidedly un-bound bosses. It looks completely wild. Traverse the break's treacherous dungeons to check it out.
]]>Four words all but guaranteed to win my attention: "a game about cats." When said four words are twinned with the knowledge that the game in question comes from the creators of Super Meat Boy and one half of The Binding Of Isaac team, my attention becomes unwavering.
We know precious little about Team Meat's Mew-Genics other than that it'll be "randomly generated, strange and involve cats" so even a tiny, kitten-size scrap of detail is enough to cause a flurry of fluffy speculation. Today, that's two new shots showing in-game characters.
]]>No, no, it's not what it sounds like. Edmund McMillen hasn't suddenly decided to beat the record for fastest "HD" remake treatment ever. This remake, to hear McMillen tell it, is very, very necessary. In short, have you ever noticed how Binding of Isaac occasionally chugs even on machines powered by blazing tech and unholy sacrifices to Shan'thulex, bloodlord of the night (and a small chain of mom 'n' pop PC hardware stores)? Well, that's because it runs on Flash, and McMillen thinks it's high-time that changed. That, however, is only the beginning of this remake.
]]>Despite the constant flow of new games to try, be they the sort of grand strategy that devours weeks or tiny flights of fancy, there are some games more than a fortnight old that I still find time to play. The Binding of Isaac is one. Short, decidedly sour and extremely attentive to my desire for carefully controlled randomisation and odd loot, every journey into the basement has something to offer. We knew an expansion was on its way and now we know it'll be here on May 28th. According to the trailer, it'll also contain 'more' of just about everything.
]]>Who wants a long look into the mind behind The Binding of Isaac? Edmund McMillen recently spoke with design3, a web portal offering education and advice for game developers, and the resulting conversation is wide-ranging, fascinating and what I believe must be referred to as 'refreshingly' honest. That's as honest as the country pub with the shaded garden serving up the first beer of a summertime Friday evening after a day of fielding calls in a thimble-sized office cubicle. The interview runs for an hour and a half but is certainly worth sticking with if you have an interest in Ed and his games, the indie scene, making games of your own or the wider industry. They cover it all.
]]>I still haven't done everything there is to do in The Binding of Isaac and it's one of the few games that I'll happily revisit for achievements and items. I want every item and I want to kill every boss with every character. That's why the news of an expansion fills me with pleasure and anxiety, although not in equal measure. The anxiety is tiny and might just be the standard white noise of dread that hums in my ears whenever I'm awake. The pleasure is immense. I always hoped Isaac would continue to sprout growths and the free Halloween update was ace. The next will require a small payment - it's going by the name The Wrath of the Lamb and according to Edmund, it adds about 50% new content. More details below.
]]>The first snow of the year made an appearance today, blanketing the world outside with the ghostly beauty of a whispered veil, as the fire roared, pressing freshly cut logs to the glowing bosom of its warming embrace and casting flickering shadows about the room. Christmas is a time for tortured and twee metaphor, that's for sure, but it's about much more than that. Above all else, perhaps, Christmas is a time for family.
]]>Here's an indie bundle with a difference - it doesn't contain any games. Instead, the Indie Music Bundle it's a collection of soundtracks from some of your favourite (assumption #1) indie games and some you have probably never heard of (assumption #2). As is swiftly becoming obligatory, the ten albums are available at a price of your choosing, although this is for one day only, being a Black Friday sale. The minimum price is $1 and if you pay at least $10 you'll receive seven bonus items.
]]>Hullo! I used to write on this site, and then I got very tired. I sleep most the day now. It's nice. When I'm sleeping, I get my nurse to play podcasts. This is my favourite games podcast in ages. Roguelike Radio is a Roguelike-centric podcast which plays a different one every couple of weeks and does a show about it. In this case, however, they've got Edmund McMillen on to talk about Binding of Isaac. And it's so brilliant, I almost managed to stand up. But my legs failed, and I was left sprawling hopelessly on the floor. I wish I had working legs and a functioning penis, though that's probably too much information. But honestly, unless my critical faculties are as rusty as my cog-powered cock, this is a genuinely brilliant, wide-ranging interview about McMillen's latest. Go listen! Meanwhile, I'm going to have a little lie down. Bye!
]]>The devious wee sods. It's always like this: the Humble Bundle announces its latest pay-what-you-want indie deal, so we duly post about it because the people should know and all that. Then, a few days later, they go and add more games to the bundle, so it seems wise to also post about that. They've got us by the short and curlies. Joking aside, clan Bundle's machinations are becoming perhaps over-obvious by this point, and I do hope there will be updated rather than ritual tactics in future.
For now though, let us celebrate that the Voxatron bundle has seen the excellently screwed-up The Binding Of Isaac and tight puzzler Blocks That Matter added to it.
]]>The most common complaint about The Binding of Isaac is that it doesn't contain enough horrid things in it, being a rather delicate cocktail of blood, tears and poo. Thankfully, the Halloween update, which will automatically apply itself to Steam copies of the game by noon PST today, adds "20% more evil". It says so in the trailer, which is gibbering madly in the sulfurous depths below, along with some details on what that extra evil is composed of, including new playable character Eve.
]]>The Binding of Isaac, Ed McMillen and Florian Himsl's icky, ingenious Zeldalike now benefits from an online demo, hosted in the browser-based medium of Flash at Newgrounds.
]]>The Binding of Isaac is a roguelike-or-is-it/shooter/body-horror/religion-bating curio from Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl. It's... different. It's nasty. It's funny. It's lightning fast. It's cruel. It's a lot of things, in one small and very cheap package. But is it any good? In the name of finding out, Alec and Adam gathered to discuss mutant babies, shooting human waste products, dicing with the devil and laser eyeballs.
]]>I’ve spent hours in a basement full of demented nightmare children, using my own tears, blood and urine to fend them off. That’s a lie. I’m not just fending them off, I’m going out of my way to seek them out and to kill them in case my murderous mother’s undergarments or shoes appear when I’ve reduced every living thing in a room to blood-pudding. Then I’ll be able to put on mother’s clothes and that will make my tears all the more bitter. The other children won’t stand a chance against me then. It’s The Binding Of Isaac. Here’s Wot I Think.
]]>Edmund McMillen's groovy looking roguelike thing - The Binding Of Isaac - is due out on Steam in the next two weeks, so it's about time he gave us a heads up of what we might expect. Fortunately, he has:
]]>And we <3 Team Meat right back. Over the weekend, they've been chatting to the cool cats over at IndieGames.com, and Ed dropped this hefty knowledge bomb:
]]>Traditionally, I enjoy my breakfast while listening to Ravel and watching the labouring classes hurrying back and forth in the street below. That all changed today. I nearly choked on my toasted muffin as my brain attempted to process the contents of The Binding of Isaac trailer. I had assumed Edmund McMillen's latest would be an inspiring and moving parable relating to the limits of blind faith and infanticide. Turns out I was wrong. It's actually about a terrifying Man-Baby refugee from an Aphex Twin video going bonkers in a dark room. I should have known. John talked about the game here and there's no fresh information to digest along with the trailer. But if you can digest the contents of the trailer itself, you have a steelier stomach than I. All this madness can be yours sometime in September through Steam.
]]>Edmund McMillen, and some of his team behind Super Meat Boy, has announced his next game. And it's for PC. The Binding Of Isaac is "a roguelike shooter based on the dungeon structure of Zelda (NES)", and is due out on Steam this August. There are more details below.
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